Non-fiction

HOW DID I BECOME A HISTORIAN?

Although history has always been a passion of mine, it was only later in life that I decided to make a career out of it.

It was late 2007, and I’d been working in I.T. – the subject of my first degree – for about two and a half years. The people were lovely and the work was okay, but I just wasn’t passionate about it. And while I’d always loved history, it seemed to present few job prospects. Fortunately, I.T. teachers with industry experience were in demand, so I decided to do a one-year Graduate Diploma in History followed by a Teaching Diploma. I reasoned that, once my I.T. background had gotten me a plum teaching job at a good school, I would weasel my way into their humanities department.

Rather than doing a Teaching Diploma, I went on to do Honours after finishing my Graduate Diploma, and then straight into my PhD (which I completed in 2015). And I wrote – oh, how I wrote. More essays that I’d ever written before in my life, it seemed. But beyond that, I also sought as many opportunities as I could for publication. My first was a space history piece for ‘Liftoff’, the magazine of the New Zealand Spaceflight Association. Since then I’ve published four journal articles, three commissioned research reports, a public history piece for NZHistory.net, and over a dozen journalistic and general interest pieces. I’ve also self-published two oral histories – one for my grandmother, and one for my friend Brian Fox.

In 2012 I started working for the Waitangi Tribunal Unit in an entry level position. I still work there today in a senior technical leadership role. Broadly, my work involves providing procedural and evidential advice and support to the Tribunal in running its inquiries. It allows me to exercise my analytical skills (on both historical and contemporary matters), including the production of commissioned historical research.

WHY DO I WRITE HISTORY?

I write history for lots of reasons. First, and perhaps most importantly, it’s because I love doing it! The excitement of poring through dusty old archives, seeking that amazing find that will confirm or shatter your assumptions (I call those ‘Indiana Jones moments’); the sudden flash of inspiration where all of the disparate threads of your research suddenly fit together; the sublime agony of writing, as you corral and cajole your thoughts into a coherent structure; and the satisfaction of casting your completed work into the wider world, perhaps therein to challenge what we all take for granted as true.

History, like other humanities subjects, is a heady and unique mix of art and science, of literary inspiration and analytical rigour. The best histories entertain and inform; they draw you in, and pull you headlong to their conclusion without pause for breath. Thus, my second and equally important reason for writing history – because I believe it should be enjoyable and accessible to all. Academic history has its place, but I am a firm believer that history should be well-written, clearly understandable, and widely read. If knowledge is to serve its transformative purpose (as I sincerely believe it should), how else could it possibly be conveyed except in a user-friendly fashion?

My primary area of interest is the often-neglected ‘history of the right’ – conservatism, authoritarianism, fascism, and any number of other ‘isms’ that fall on the right side of the political spectrum. While my own political views lie on the opposite end of the spectrum, I find myself drawn to trying to understand those who find an ideological home so far from my own.

My thesis looked at several populist conservative movements that arose in Australia and New Zealand during the Great Depression. These movements sprang into being being virtually overnight and amassed a collective membership numbering in the hundreds of thousands. At the height of their influence they posed a direct challenge to the electoral base of mainstream conservative parties. They soon faded away from the political scene and, indeed, from the collective memory of Australian and New Zealand society.

Where had they come from? Why they had amassed such widespread support so quickly? What kind of people supported them, and why? What shared beliefs and assumptions drove them, and what did they hope to achieve? And perhaps most importantly, why did they apparently fail to achieve any lasting success? It is these questions that I sought to answer in my thesis, and which generally feed my interest in the history of similar right-wing movements and ideologies.

Inaugural meeting of the Citizens’ League of South Australia at the Adelaide Town Hall. Source: Register, 16 October 1930, 13.

Other research interests

I also have a number of other research interests, including environmental history, political history, the Cold War, the politics of space exploration, and historical methodology.